Santa is on strike due to global warming. Â All presents this year will be delivered by Sasha the Christmas Tiger. Â Milk and cookies may not be sufficient.
America gets deadly bacterial outbreaks in their meat and milk every six months but we get ONE hallucinating spinach incident and everyone acts like weâre the ones with problems.
So now I have to deliver a quiet lecture on the Standard Model every night. He loves lists of things, like all the streets home from daycare, or the train stations between here and Central, so he loves hearing the list of leptons and quarks and bosons.
Alas I ran out of room for antimatter, colour charge and confinement, but hey, maybe there can be a second poster later.
Itâs funny though â on the surface of it, it seems like it must be far too advanced for a 3yo. But when you think about it, quarks and leptons are no more or less real to him than, say, dinosaurs or planets, and he loves those too. And he recognises the letters on the particles.
I am absolutely overwhelmed by the kind and sweet things people are saying about this, thanks everyone â¤ď¸
Addendum: he has really grasped onto the âeverything is made of atomsâ part of this, so tonight he listed just about every object he could think of and asked if it was made of atoms.
âAnd my bed?â Yes, and your bed. âAnd that wall?â Yep. âAnd the armchair?â Yes, the armchair too. ⌠⌠âAnd⌠the book case?â Yâ
âAnd my home?â Yep, the whole apartment block. âAnd your home? Oh wait, your home is my home.â Haha, it is. ⌠⌠âBut is it made of atoms?â Yep. âAnd⌠[best friend]âs home?â Yes, it is. And [other friend]âs home, and [third friend]âs home.
âIs [yet another friend]âs home?â
Update from the other night:
âIs my⌠is⌠[extremely long pause] is my atoms poster made up of atoms?â âYes! Yes it is.
I have never heard such a contemplative silence. I think the next poster will have to be on the philosophy of referential language.
Update from this morning: after listing everything in sight (mummy? daddy? fridge? milk? cereal? table? etc.) he asks âis [baby sister] made up of atoms?â
yep!
*runs over to her on the floor* *puts face up real close to hers* âHI! YOUâRE MADE UP OF LOTS OF ATOMS! DID YOU KNOW?â
I am an ER nurse and this is the best description of this event that I have ever heard.Â
 FEMALE HEART ATTACKSÂ
 I was aware that female heart attacks are different, but this is description is so incredibly visceral that I feel like I have an entire new understanding of what it feels like to be living the symptoms on the inside. Women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have⌠you know, the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest & dropping to the floor the we see in movies. Here is the story of one womanâs experience with a heart attack:Â
 "I had a heart attack at about 10:30 PM with NO prior exertion, NO prior emotional trauma that one would suspect might have brought it on. I was sitting all snugly & warm on a cold evening, with my purring cat in my lap, reading an interesting story my friend had sent me, and actually thinking, âA-A-h, this is the life, all cozy and warm in my soft, cushy Lazy Boy with my feet propped up.
A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion, when youâve been in a hurry and grabbed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with a dash of water, and that hurried bite seems to feel like youâve swallowed a golf ball going down the esophagus in slow motion and it is most uncomfortable. You realize you shouldnât have gulped it down so fast and needed to chew it more thoroughly and this time drink a glass of water to hasten its progress down to the stomach. This was my initial sensationâthe only trouble was that I hadnât taken a bite of anything since about 5:00 p.m.Â
After it seemed to subside, the next sensation was like little squeezing motions that seemed to be racing up my SPINE (hind-sight, it was probably my aorta spasms), gaining speed as they continued racing up and under my sternum (breast bone, where one presses rhythmically when administering CPR).
This fascinating process continued on into my throat and branched out into both jaws. âAHA!! NOW I stopped puzzling about what was happening â we all have read and/or heard about pain in the jaws being one of the signals of an MI happening, havenât we? I said aloud to myself and the cat, Dear God, I think Iâm having a heart attack!
I lowered the foot rest dumping the cat from my lap, started to take a step and fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself, If this is a heart attack, I shouldnât be walking into the next room where the phone is or anywhere else⌠but, on the other hand, if I donât, nobody will know that I need help, and if I wait any longer I may not be able to get up in a moment.Â
I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the next room and dialed the Paramedics⌠I told her I thought I was having a heart attack due to the pressure building under the sternum and radiating into my jaws. I didnât feel hysterical or afraid, just stating the facts. She said she was sending the Paramedics over immediately, asked if the front door was near to me, and if so, to un-bolt the door and then lie down on the floor where they could see me when they came in.
I unlocked the door and then laid down on the floor as instructed and lost consciousness, as I donât remember the medics coming in, their examination, lifting me onto a gurney or getting me into their ambulance, or hearing the call they made to St. Jude ER on the way, but I did briefly awaken when we arrived and saw that the radiologist was already there in his surgical blues and cap, helping the medics pull my stretcher out of the ambulance. He was bending over me asking questions (probably something like âHave you taken any medications?â) but I couldnât make my mind interpret what he was saying, or form an answer, and nodded off again, not waking up until the Cardiologist and partner had already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up my femoral artery into the aorta and into my heart where they installed 2 side by side stints to hold open my right coronary artery.Â
I know it sounds like all my thinking and actions at home must have taken at least 20-30 minutes before calling the paramedics, but actually it took perhaps 4-5 minutes before the call, and both the fire station and St Jude are only minutes away from my home, and my Cardiologist was already to go to the OR in his scrubs and get going on restarting my heart (which had stopped somewhere between my arrival and the procedure) and installing the stents.
Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail? Because I want all of you who are so important in my life to know what I learned first hand.Â
1. Be aware that something very different is happening in your body, not the usual menâs symptoms but inexplicable things happening (until my sternum and jaws got into the act). It is said that many more women than men die of their first (and last) MI because they didnât know they were having one and commonly mistake it as indigestion, take some Maalox or other anti-heartburn preparation and go to bed, hoping theyâll feel better in the morning when they wake up⌠which doesnât happen. My female friends, your symptoms might not be exactly like mine, so I advise you to call the Paramedics if ANYTHING is unpleasantly happening that youâve not felt before. It is better to have a âfalse alarmâ visitation than to risk your life guessing what it might be!
2. Note that I said âCall the Paramedics.â And if you can take an aspirin. Ladies, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!
Do NOT try to drive yourself to the ER - you are a hazard to others on the road.
Do NOT have your panicked husband who will be speeding and looking anxiously at whatâs happening with you instead of the road.
Do NOT call your doctor â he doesnât know where you live and if itâs at night you wonât reach him anyway, and if itâs daytime, his assistants (or answering service) will tell you to call the Paramedics. He doesnât carry the equipment in his car that you need to be saved! The Paramedics do, principally OXYGEN that you need ASAP. Your Dr. will be notified later.
3. Donât assume it couldnât be a heart attack because you have a normal cholesterol count. Research has discovered that a cholesterol elevated reading is rarely the cause of an MI (unless itâs unbelievably high and/or accompanied by high blood pressure). MIs are usually caused by long-term stress and inflammation in the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hormones into your system to sludge things up in there. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Letâs be careful and be aware. The more we know the better chance we could survive to tell the tale.â
Reblog, repost, Facebook, tweet, pin, email, morse code, fucking carrier pigeon this to save a life!
I wish I knew who the author was. Iâm definitely not the OP, actually think it might be an old chain email or even letter from back in the day. The version I saw floating around Facebook ended with âmy cardiologist says mail this to 10 friends, maybe youâll save one!â And knew this was way too interesting not to pass on.
Female heart attacks are much different, and most people donât know it!
This is so much more helpful than the fucking lists that basically describe everything that happens during a really nasty panic attack and then tell you to go seek help as if you donât have an anxiety disorder that does this to you on a regular basis and can afford to go to the emergency room.
Auto-reblog.
Many women have silent heart attacks as well, where there are no symptoms at all until BAM! Then it happens.
As a formerly (mostly) healthy person who is now dealing with post-covid heart issues, this was tremendously helpful to read. Reblog, save a life.
Important for all genders so you can recognize other symptoms in yourself and others.
ALT
